According to the New Yorker's David Remnick, Tzipi Livni's frustration with Bennett’s
ascent in the polls is palpable. “To be right wing is to be strong, to
be left wing is to be weak, appeasing, to be naïve—and ‘We can’t afford
naïveté in this region,’ ” she said, mimicking the voice of Bennett’s
expanding base. “He is the new Sabra! The new Israeli!”
“No one is talking about the core issues,” Tzipi Livni, told Remnick between campaign stops in Jerusalem, because
after four years of Netanyahu “there is no hope for peace.” Most people,
she said, “think, ‘The Palestinians refuse every offer,’ ‘The whole
world is against us anyway,’ ‘They are all anti-Semitic,’ and so on. And
the ideological settlers think that every day that passes without
negotiations is a victory.”
But here is the bombshell:
"Tzipi Livni.. acknowledges that a deal requires risks that are outweighed only by the risks of not making a deal. “Making peace will be painful,” she said. “It means not just giving up land; it means you take real security risks. It’s going to be bloody. We would face terror at first. We all want to live happily ever after in peace, but that won’t happen at first. It will take time between the agreement and real peace, and whoever makes it will be criticized as a traitor. And, if you decide to do nothing, you can just manage the situation.” The security fence, she said, provides the temporary illusion of “we are here and they are there.”